All The Scars You Cannot See
by Ellana-san
Summary: There was something you never ever did in polite society and that was kissing someone's scars without their express permission. It would have been rude, after all, to accidentally impose yourself as a soulmate on an unsuspecting soul.


Prompt: One of the soulmate au:s on the post you reblogged just earlier made me think of hayffie. "The only way for your scars to disappear is when your soulmate kisses them goodbye." Pretty please? Love your writing (:

_**All The Scars You Cannot See**_

There was something you never ever did in polite society and that was kissing someone's scars without their express permission. It would have been rude, after all, to accidentally impose yourself as a soulmate on an unsuspecting soul.

Capitols loathed the idea of soulmates.

Oh, they would gush about it in movies and stories and talk everyone ear's off about how _lucky _Mr So-and-so was to have found himself one but, in practice, soulmates were something most of the Capitols feared. As romantic as the idea was, long lasting relationships in the city that weren't sealed by marriage were rare and marriages were mostly a matter of convenience and business. Romances were short-lived, fluctuating with the tide of fashion. And, to the elevated minds they aspired to be, the idea that fate brought two people together by giving them the power of erasing their respective scars was a little ridiculous. A little too _fairy-taily_ perhaps. The Capitol was far from being a fairy tale. It was a shimmering word of glitter and colorful lights where the knives hid behind smoke screens and sweet smiles.

So, all in all, it was only polite to avoid any area with scars on it.

It wasn't that difficult, really, because Capitols didn't tend to _have _scars. A flawless skin was, after all, one of the basics.

District people on the other end didn't much care for skin imperfections – or peeling treatment, it seemed – and thus Effie was confronted with the sight of a scar in an intimate situation for the first time when Haymitch pushed her on the couch after having ripped her dress off like a caveman – although it was _not_ the first time she had been intimate with Haymitch, far from it, but it was the first time they made the effort of taking their clothes off.

The scar was huge and budging on his right side, white on his tanned skin, so swollen that it looked brand new.

He didn't appreciate her gasp of shock and if he answered it with a chuckle, it was bitter and mocking, almost cruel. The sex was never _not _rough but it was even more brutal than usual after that. Slightly better too.

There were more scars on his back. Pale faded lines that crisscrossed over the length of his shoulder blades, stretched over his lower back, the tip of one barely grazing his left butt cheek.

She had a difficult time with the scars.

She was used to perfect lovers. Groomed, smooth skin, esthete bodies… _Clean_. Perfumed.

Haymitch was the complete opposite. His hands were calloused, his stubble left burn marks on her skin, his hygiene left to be desired, he never wore cologne, he was all muscles in some places and sagging flesh in others… He was as imperfect as could be and the scars only made that more striking.

He was _real_.

He was real like nothing else in her life had felt real since she had entered the Games business.

She avoided the scars.

When they had sex, her mouth gave a wide berth to the right side of his stomach, the length of his back, his left knee and the strange small scar on the second knuckle on the forefinger of his left hand.

The scars repulsed her because they were an affront to an ideal of beauty she had been taught to worship since infancy.

It was alright because, on most days, Haymitch repulsed her too.

The shift was so gradual she barely noticed it.

It started with pangs of jealousy when she saw him flirt with other women, with his pounding into her harder every time he caught her making passes at sponsors… It started with her viciously biting down on his inner thighs to leave her mark and with his hand coiling possessively around her nape in the middle of sex… It started with bittersweet kisses when he left her bed and his face burying in her stomach for comfort when he drank too much… It started with her taking off her wig and his rare confidences about his past… It started with the ache in her chest and the tenderness she thought she glimpsed in his grey eyes sometimes…

One year she woke up tangled in dirty sheets, Haymitch dozing off next to her, and she realized he didn't repulse her anymore.

And neither did the scars.

He startled the first time she touched them, held his breath the first time she deliberately ran her fingertips along the length of the big one on his side, frowned when she licked her lips with the inexplicable urge to _taste _it…

"Don't you _fucking_ dare put your mouth on it." he warned.

Not _kiss _it.

_Put your mouth on it. _

If he had been his soulmate, a brush of her lips would have done the trick. But it was so symbolic of what they shared to bring it down to its more prosaic form… Not a kiss but a mere physical touch.

She never tried to see if the scars would disappear. She wasn't even tempted to. If a part of her fantasized about him being her soulmate, about having something that was just hers and good in her life, it was a nice change from the nightmares and the guilt that was always so difficult to repress when she was alone in her bed at night. Deep down, she didn't even want to find out. Nobody had ever loved her unconditionally, not even her own mother. She was bound to disappoint.

Love, she had learned long ago, had to be fought for, bought, _enticed… _She already had love. She had a sea of people screaming her name, desperate to touch her, see her, _be her_…

Haymitch would never love her – he had told her so enough times – and it was alright. They were only in this for the physical aspect. She told herself so. Repeatedly.

Sometimes, when he tensed in her arms as her fingers retraced a scar or other, she wondered what _he _was so scared of. He couldn't believe she was his soulmate. It was ridiculous. Not even worth considering. It would have been the cruelest of jokes. A mistake.

When Katniss volunteered for her sister, Effie briefly wondered what it must be like to love someone that much. She knew she would never have stepped forward for her own sister. She knew she would never have stepped forward for anyone.

And then, that night, a drunk Haymitch stumbled in her train compartment, flopped down on her bed and curled up around her like an octopus. He muttered an almost inaudible _I miss you _against her hair and she turned around to mouth three different words against his neck. She thought, at that moment, that maybe there was someone she would volunteer for, after all. _Perhaps_.

She had never lived through more stressing Games than the Seventy-fourth. Twelve had never gone so far, Haymitch had never been so focused, they had never had involved stylists before and she had never been forced to stretch herself so thin…

She barely slept during the weeks that the Games lasted, barely ate, barely drank… When she brought Seneca to Haymitch so that he could sell his rule change idea, she stood a few feet away and observed them, _compared _them. It would have been easier if Seneca had been her soulmate but she knew for a fact he wasn't because they had tried when they were children, had worked it out just right with a scratch under his ring finger so his parents wouldn't notice it. The scar hadn't disappeared when she had kissed it. Of course, it was before he had realized he didn't want to marry her – because he may have loved her but not like a husband ought to love a wife. Still, Seneca loved her and she loved him. Long lasting friends were too rare in the city. Sometimes she thought Haymitch didn't even love her like _that_.

And yet once Seneca had nodded with a reluctant pout and Haymitch made his way back to her, the easy way he wrapped his arms around her with twinkling eyes and a rare smile on his lips told her that maybe he did after all.

The berries threw a wrench in the plan.

Haymitch bolted on his feet when Katniss offered the handful of berries to Peeta. Effie was too busy chewing on her thumbnail with anxiety, unable to look away from the screen.

They were in public, in a room full of sponsors and victors from other Districts, and it was necessary to keep up a certain front but, privately, she wondered how long it would take Peacekeepers to find them and arrest them once the children had committed suicide. Somehow, she was certain the responsibility would fall back on _them_. A big part of her didn't even care about that, not when they had come so far only for both of the children to die. _Again_.

She knew there was no winning, had known for a long time, but still it felt unfair. They had gotten so far…

The whole room was silent, as if everyone was holding their breath, save for the occasional sniff and muffled sob.

When the room erupted in cheers and the children hugged on screen, her ears rang. She didn't understand because they were both still alive and surely… She was swept off her feet, trapped in Haymitch's suffocating embrace…

For a minute, as it registered that they had won, that they had _really _won, the only thing she tasted was _euphoria_. She clung to Haymitch as hard as he was clinging to her, half swaying in a ridiculous victory dance that turned into a probably inappropriate long hug.

"We need to really sell the love story." he whispered in her ear and the happiness of victory had already faded. "Make it look less… _rebellious_."

"The scars." she answered immediately, always on the same wave length.

He nodded, loosened his embrace so they could look at each other. "Make it happen."

They turned to accept congratulations from other escorts, victors and sponsors alike. She shook hands, exchanged air kisses, smiled and smiled until her mouth hurt…

And when the children's hovercraft finally reached the Capitol, she gave very specific instructions to the doctor, slipped more than one check with a five figures number so the Gamemakers would never know, so the audience would _swoon _and forget about the potentially rebellious aspect of things.

Nobody would blame a girl for going to desperate lengths to save her soulmate so _any_ scar had to go.

Haymitch informed Katniss before the Crowning but nobody told Peeta and the boy somehow believed it to be true, that the girl kissed his scars and they disappeared. Effie's heart broke when Haymitch told her about that, it broke again when Peeta learned the truth.

"We keep them alive." Haymitch mumbled to her as they were about to part until the Tour. Everyone looked so sad and gloomy, the exact opposite of what should be. "Alive is good. Happy is asking too much."

"Soulmates are overrated." she whispered back. "Try to make him understand."

She went back to the Capitol, Seneca died and, in her grief, she was strangely grateful his scar never disappeared when she had kissed it. She wasn't allowed to mourn him publicly, she was forced to downplay their friendship for the press, she pretended to be shocked by his suicide like most escorts and Gamemakers did.

She knew how to play the Game too well.

It didn't save her from the other escorts suddenly keeping their distances or from the strange men in non-descript cars shadowing her every time she went out.

She was scared.

She was scared and she only breathed again once the Tour was in motion and she could snuggle against Haymitch's naked side in the room he hadn't yet managed to completely trash.

As the Tour dragged on toward its finish line, her lips drifted closer and closer to his scars.

She never managed to gather the courage to take the leap.

He didn't encourage her one way or the other.

She wasn't sure what to do with the tacit and tentative permission. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

She had been telling Peeta soulmates weren't everything and she _believed _that but she thought knowing for sure he wasn't meant to be with her would crush her because it implied he was meant to be with someone else and Effie had never been anyone's first choice, not ever. Everything she had achieved, she had fought for – a District person, _Haymitch, _would scowl at that statement but it _was_ true, she had worked hard to get where she had gotten, she was an excellent model, the _best_, and she overworked herself when she acted as his escort.

She wasn't sure how the children ascertained with certainty they weren't soulmates in the midst of the Quell announcement and Twelve turning into even more of a death camp than usual, she was just told they knew.

The moment her fingers pulled the folded piece of paper out of the glass ball, she knew it was Haymitch's name. She couldn't have said _how_ she knew, but she _did_, and for a crazy mad second she almost did the unthinkable and call out the wrong name because the thought of losing him was like a punch in the chest, her lungs closing off, her throat tightening, her hands shaking, her head spinning, her heart _aching _so badly it made her dizzy.

Then, of course, she remembered herself and _Peeta, _she remembered _Peeta_, and that the children had to come first, _always_.

Her voice broke on the first syllable of his last name but she didn't have time to linger on the pain she felt inside because Peeta, that sweet brave boy, pushed Haymitch back and _volunteered_. Then all hell broke loose and she was dragged aside by overzealous Peacekeepers who grabbed her arms and the only thing she could see was Haymitch fighting his way to her and shouting at them to let her go.

The rest went by in a blur.

Haymitch didn't like her gold tokens idea. He didn't say much about it in front of the children but grabbed her naked thighs harder and pounded into her without mercy later on, grumbled into her neck that it was _dangerous _to make that kind of statement, that she should be more careful and that she was slipping and…

"Do you ever wonder?" she whispered once he was done rambling about her recent failings as a perfect Capitol drone.

She couldn't even get angry about his berating her. Not when he could have so easily been on his way to a brand new arena. Not when lying under him, her hips lifting up to match his unforgiving pace, felt like something of a miracle.

Her right hand was groping his ass, urging him on, but her other hand was flat on the small of his back, covering the largest of the scars there.

The rhythm of his pounding quickened and she knew he was close but pleasure was evading her. She didn't try to pursue it, her nerves were too frayed and she was desperate to stay in the moment, anchored to him, safe under his weight, _happy _under his weight.

His breath came out in fast puffs against her neck, under her ear and she closed her eyes, not particularly awaiting an answer.

He grunted his release, dropped his forehead on the pillow next to her head, his puffing breaths blowing away strands of her blond hair… Their bodies stuck together with the thin layer of sweat… She closed her eyes tighter when he nuzzled her ear, bit down on the earlobe, let his tongue play with her diamond stud…

"Not really." he admitted.

Something crumbled in her chest but it only lasted a second. Disappointment was only vicious if you let it win. She forced a bright smile on her lips so that he wouldn't see she was upset when he would inevitably plant a kiss on her lips before rolling off her.

Capitols didn't tend to have scars. Flawless skin was one of the basics and Effie had always taken religious care of her own, smeared her body with lotions and creams, bathed with asses' milk, went to institutes to get pampered…

The moment the arena exploded she knew it was about to change.

She tried to reach her apartment because that was where Haymitch had said she should be at midnight. He hadn't explained more than that, had simply grabbed her arms tight in the shower, water streaming down their bodies, plastering their hair to their faces, he had grabbed her arms tight and had shaken her twice, _hissing _at her that she _needed _to be there and do what she was told, no questions asked.

Except she had been delayed.

She _tried _to reach her apartment, she _did_, she walked so quickly down the crowded streets that there was a stitch in her side. Her heart was beating so hard she thought she would throw up.

It was worse when she caught sight of the Peacekeepers making their way toward her.

It took all she had to compose herself a puzzled face, to stutter that she didn't know what was going on in the arena, that she had lost Haymitch in the crowd and that she had been swept up by the stampede and thought going home would be safer…

She didn't have to fake the fear. The fear was making her stomach burn.

They weren't nice when they brought her back to the Training Center. Their fingers left bruises on her arms and they dragged her behind them at such a brisk pace that she stumbled every two steps. They didn't slow down or apologized. They entered the Center through a side door, she was pushed into a nondescript grey elevator that she had never seen before and she instinctively knew it would be a long time before she would feel the outside air again.

The elevator went down.

The Peacekeepers remained silent.

She repeated to herself again and again that she was a Capitol citizen and she wouldn't be hurt.

She was too smart to truly believe that but she had always been good at deluding herself.

They tossed her in a standard interrogation room – or, at the very least, what movies had taught her was standard – and left her there alone, to stare at her reflection on the one-way mirror. She looked frightful. Her make-up was smudged and her wig's style was coming loose.

How long did she wait? An hour? Two? It felt like _forever_.

All the while she worried about the children, about Haymitch, about whatever foolish crusade he had involved himself in. She wasn't stupid enough not to have seen the signs. But could the rebels win against the might of the Capitol? It felt hopeless.

"I demand to see my attorney." she spat as soon as the door opened on a new Peacekeeper. That one, she had never seen before, he wasn't part of the Center's security guards, and his small beetle black eyes made a shiver ran down her spine. They felt hollow. "I have _rights_."

She had prepared herself for physical abuse but the backslap still made her eyes sting with tears.

"Districts sluts have no right." the Peacekeeper replied.

She licked her lips and didn't even try to argue. So that was how it was going to be…

There were questions. There were slaps and hair pulling and pinches every time she failed to answer.

But by the time the Peacekeeper turned to the one-way mirror with a frustrated sigh, she was still more or less intact and she dared hope it was over. She was clueless and it wasn't just an act, surely they could see that? Surely, they would let her go?

Her wig was already hanging loose from when he had pulled it off her head to tug at her roots, the Peacekeeper completely tore it off in an angry move before leaving the room.

She sat with her back rode straight, her chin high, her features schooled into polite disinterest. She wouldn't give them the pleasure of watching her fall apart. She _wouldn't_.

It didn't take the Peacekeeper long to come back and there were two more with him that time. She had hoped it was over, she had _hoped_. She realized it had just begun.

They made her strip down right in front of them.

They hoped to humiliate her, she thought, but the joke was on them because she had never been ashamed of her body. So strip she did and without shedding a tear. She was a lady and ladies didn't make spectacles of herself. _Chin high, eyes bright, smile_… She couldn't muster a smile for the life of her but she kept her lips pursed tight because she would die before she let them so much as _wobble_.

"You brought this upon yourself, you know." the Peacekeeper with the soulless eyes said. There was glee in his voice and she hated the way he was staring at her, as if she was a new toy for him to play with. "That's what you get for _fucking_ District dogs."

She eyed him up and down with regal bearing, as if she was wearing the finest silk instead of standing naked and exposed to those men's greedy gazes. "Some District dogs are more distinguished than others."

The slight earned her a sneer, a slap and his hatred.

Still Effie didn't cry.

She didn't cry when they tore her fake nails off, sometimes taking a real one with it. She didn't cry when they _really _beat her for the first time. She didn't cry when they mocked her for being gullible enough to believe Haymitch could care about her or when they told her he had just been using her as a cum dump and her loyalty was misplaced or when they told her he was dead and gone. She didn't cry when they tossed her in a cell that had no windows, no beds and no commodities. She didn't cry when they dragged her out of it the next morning and tempted her with food and water.

She didn't cry when they kept asking the same questions over and over again. Questions she could only answer with _I don't know. _

She didn't cry when they tossed her in another cell. She didn't cry when she recognized Portia's prone form or when she realized her friend's jaw was broken. She didn't cry when Portia's gaze fell on her without truly seeing her. She didn't cry when she lost grip on time and couldn't tell how long she had been there anymore.

She didn't cry when she _really _got scared, when it truly sank in that it would get bad before it got better.

She didn't cry when they took her away from Portia and showed her Johanna's abused body. She didn't cry when they forced her to kneel in front of Peeta or when they asked the questions she had gotten so used to hearing. She didn't cry when the whip licked her skin. She didn't cry even when Peeta did, when he swore high and low he didn't know anything and begged them to stop hurting her.

She was too numb to cry.

The only thing she could do was cling to hope and repeat to her victors again and again that Haymitch would come, Haymitch would save them, Haymitch would never leave them behind…

She didn't cry when it _really _got bad.

She wasn't sure how long they had been trapped down there, long enough that she now had scars to boost. Ugly little things that crisscrossed all over her body and made her fantasize about going on a quest to find her soulmate after all because it would take years of reparative surgeries to erase them all otherwise.

She didn't cry when Johanna had to pull her shoulder back into its socket. She didn't cry when the Peacekeepers' increasing frustration at not getting answers made the daily humiliations ten time worse. She didn't cry when they trained her to answer only to _Abernathy's bitch _and nothing else. She didn't cry as a rule.

"You know…" Johanna laughed one day – or night, impossible to tell – and it was a mad laugh, a broken hysterical laugh. "For a pampered little thing, you're kind of bad ass."

One day, the Head Peacekeeper, the one who was in charge of torture and who seemed to get off on it so badly, decided to shave their heads.

She cried then.

She cried ugly tears and she couldn't stop, not even when the sobs made her broken ribs hurt so badly it made breathing difficult.

She cried and cried and cried until Johanna told her to cut it off if she didn't want to get punched.

Empty threat.

Johanna still let her snuggle close when they decided to sleep. Back to back, wounds to wounds, to keep the chill of the cell at bay, Effie stared at the ugly scar on her arm and wondered who would even want her if she ever got out of there. Her head was cold and felt too light. She felt ugly. They had finally taken everything from her.

"They're doing something to the boy." Jo said, her voice rough from having screamed all day.

Effie had screamed too.

Screaming wasn't crying and she had done her share of that.

"I know." she whispered. She knew but she didn't see what they could do about it. The Peacekeepers didn't even bother asking questions anymore. They were toys to vent their frustration on. Annie was blissfully left alone, she hadn't glimpsed Portia in what felt like weeks and Peeta was kept away from the two of them. "Rescue will come."

And rescue did come.

Just not for her.

They moved her away from the Center with her head in a bag so she didn't know where the prison was or could even feel the sunlight on her face. She was tossed in a cell that was so small she could touch the ceiling and the four walls by stretching one arm. There was no light. No sound. It was a living tomb.

She couldn't say how long she stayed there, long enough that more wounds scarred, but it was long enough for her to determine not all the scars were as obvious as a white line on an otherwise smooth skin. Not all the scars were physical and those would be impossible to kiss away.

She was half mad when she finally woke up on a hospital bed. She had been there for some time, she knew. She had vague memories of screaming herself hoarse, of fleeing doctors' touch and of the unbearable caress of the sunlight on her face. She had longed for the brightness but now her eyes hurt even in the dimmed neon lights. She had vague memories of Haymitch coaxing her out of the insane visions and terrors too.

He was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes and didn't feel like climbing the walls in fear for the first time. He was slumped on a chair, one of his hands in his hair as if he had aborted the movement in the middle of it and had forgotten about it, his face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his skin a sickly shade of yellow.

"Haymitch." she whispered, tried to because her throat hurt.

His grey eyes darted to hers, roamed over her face.

It was the first coherent word she uttered and she was still too out of it to understand why he started crying.

She didn't understand everything he told her afterwards – some of it several times over the next few days because she kept forgetting – the City Circle, the bombings, the dead Capitol children, President Coin… It was all abstract to her. What mattered was that Finnick was dead, Annie pregnant, Johanna alive, Katniss injured and Peeta mentally unstable.

The children needed her.

And because they needed her she rose from her ashes.

It wasn't that easy, of course. She was scarred inside and out, unable to bear the sight of herself in the mirror, unable to face the perspective of sleep without Haymitch holding her, unable to stop feeling like a stranger in her own body, unable to stop expecting the whole thing to be a dream and to wake up in a cell, unable to stop expecting _pain_…

But she pretended.

And she was so good at pretending she almost managed to convince herself.

Haymitch was terrified she would realize he had failed her and would push him away. She needed him too much for that. There was resentment despite Plutarch explaining – several times – that he was really the one to blame for her not being brought to Thirteen in the first place. There was resentment but it was buried under the pathological need to feel safe. And she only felt safe with Haymitch's arms wrapped around her.

She was aware of the trials taking place beyond the closed space of her hospital room, of course, she was aware everything wasn't as over as Haymitch claimed it was and that there was hard bargaining taking place behind the scenes for her safety.

She was released in the end, freed from her hospital room, at liberty to go as she pleased… Or, at least, that was the theory. In all practicality, she was dependent on Haymitch who had told her that her apartment wasn't safe to go back to and that it would be better for her to stick with him, in the Presidential Mansion, where he could keep an eye on her. He didn't say it like that. He said she would be closer to the children but she heard the rest anyway.

She shared his suite in the Mansion because it was easier and because there would have been little point to having a room of her own she wouldn't be using. She still couldn't face the idea of a night by herself. She had been alone for so long, loneliness was an immediate source of anxiety.

So she spent her nights in his arms and her days either trailing after him or fussing over Johanna, Peeta or Annie.

She smiled and laughed and covered her face with make-up, hid her short hair under colorful wigs that Plutarch had found her, dressed in expensive silk that made the soldiers scowl when they crossed paths in the corridors…

It was harder to pretend in the evenings, when she stood there in the shirt she had stolen from Haymitch to sleep in, her hair on display and her face bare. It was impossible to resist the glare of the mirror mounted on the wardrobe door. It was impossible to ignore the reality.

"I am so ugly." she whispered, watching her reflection touch its hollow cheek in the mirror.

Haymitch was already in bed, exhausted, battling his own demons in the form of the yet unopened bottle he had placed on his bedside table. "What?"

His attention shifted from the bottle to her. It would have been a victory, once, to supplant alcohol. Now she could barely bother to glance at him in the mirror, too fascinated – too _repulsed _– by her own reflection. "I said I am so ugly now. I do not know how you can stand the sight."

She added a touch of lightness to her voice, made it sound like a joke… It _was _a joke. Of a sort.

She hadn't counted on him shooting out of bed, half-crawling the length of it to reach her faster. His arms closed around her from behind and he pressed his nose against the side of her neck. "Sweetheart… You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen… Alright, maybe not right now… You're a bit underweight right now… But you're gonna get there again… You're so _fucking_ beautiful. So _fucking_…"

"I am covered in scars." she hissed. She hated it when he lied to her. He didn't lie often. Truth was more hurtful and they had always done their best to hurt each other over the years.

He watched her long and hard in the mirror, his grey eyes staring into hers with a mad sort of intensity…

The shirt had slipped down her left shoulder, right where the end of one of the whipping scars curled. She didn't realize what he was going to do at once, not when he slowly brushed his hand over the spot and not when he kept the shirt in lace down her shoulder. Only when he lowered his head did she grasp his intention.

She bolted to the other side of the room before his lips could touch her skin, her heart beating so fast the bedroom started spinning around her. "What are you doing?"

He stood there, clad in nothing but his boxers and a grey undershirt, looking lost and perhaps a little hurt. "What do you think?"

She opened her mouth and closed it, not quite sure she wasn't going to throw up. She felt behind her until she found the wall, until she could lean against it. "What if it does not work?"

"I know it's gonna work." he scoffed. "Come on, sweetheart, you know too… You must feel it, yeah?"

"No." she cut him off, shaking her head. "No. If it does not work… No. It will _break_ me, Haymitch. It will break me for good. Don't. _Don't_."

She was working herself into a panic and he lifted both hands in front of him, looking alarmed. "Alright, alright. I won't kiss your scars. I won't. Just calm down, yeah? Breathe…"

"Don't." she repeated, half-sobbing, watching him creep closer warily. "I can't… I _can't_… If you're not… I would rather not know than…"

"Alright. _Alright_." he promised, reaching for her, tugging her in his embrace. She sagged against him, clutching his shirt in her hands. "_Shh_. I've got you now. I've got you."

He never tried to kiss her scars again.

Only long after that night, once Katniss had murdered the latest tyrant and the new emergency was to prepare for her trial, once they had moved out of the Presidential Mansion to Plutarch's house and then to her ransacked apartment, once she had grown comfortable enough letting him _touch _her again, did he bring it up again. He was curled up around her body, spooning her so tight she let out a sigh of contentment at the feeling of his naked flesh pressed against hers, and he playfully nuzzled her nape. "Effie… You used to be obsessed with soulmates."

That was a preposterous accusation because she _hadn't been_.

"You are confusing me with someone else." she huffed.

"You touched my scars all the time." he countered, sounding a little wistful. "You never do now."

She didn't like touching his scars because it reminded her of her own. He couldn't really avoid hers, not when they mapped across her body, but she could avoid his.

"I wondered at times. It is only natural, is it not?" she challenged. She wished he would stop talking about that, stop ruining the mood… She curled up tighter and he followed until they were an odd irregular ball of sort.

"We could try." he insisted.

"You never wanted to try before." she pointed out.

"_Cause_ it'd have been complicated before." He sighed.

"It _still_ is complicated." she argued, entwining their fingers together to soften the blow. "Go to sleep. We have to be at Plutarch's early tomorrow."

Haymitch was stubborn. It was both a trait of his she admired and that irked her to no end. "It _ain't_ that complicated now…" She didn't answer. "Is it like… You don't wanna know cause you don't want me to be…"

"Haymitch." she snapped. "What I truly want is to _sleep_." He flinched and she wasn't really surprised when he untangled himself from her after only a few minutes. She rolled on her back and wrapped the sheets around her chest, not as comfortable with nudity as she used to be. She didn't switch the light on when he slipped out of bed to the heap of clothes on the chair in the corner of her bedroom. She watched his figure in the moonlight streaming from the window, watched him rummage around for his flask, watched him take a few gulps… Her irritation softened and she let out a long sigh. "You will leave, Haymitch."

He snorted but didn't turn around to look at her. "Seems to me like I ain't the one doing the leaving."

She didn't ask what he meant by that. She might have been a little distant of late. She sought physical comfort from him but she didn't talk to him, not about what mattered, and she felt an urge to protect herself. _Abernathy's bitch, _hateful voices mocked in the deep of night, _too stupid to know she was being used_.

"Once the trial is over… You won't stay in the city." she said.

They hadn't discussed that either but she knew him only too well. He wanted to get involved with the new government but was being more or less gently brushed aside. He hated living in the Capitol.

"Don't see what I've got to stay for." he scoffed, taking a long mouthful. Her silence must have been telling because he turned around with a startled expression on his face. "Don't mean… Don't mean_ you_. Just…" He was disappointed by politics. She knew. And maybe she didn't. He sighed, tossed his flask aside and came to sit on the edge of the bed, facing her. "Let's go somewhere else, Princess, somewhere new. You, me and the kids. Start over."

_Start over. _

As if it would be so easy.

As if they could just so easily shed their past.

"We will always be who we are, Haymitch." she whispered. "We could go to the furthest District and people would still know us. You are their hero and they hate me."

"Yeah." he snorted. "But _I _love you."

The words hit her like a whip lash. Quick painful and burning.

He averted his eyes as soon as they were out, looking embarrassed and slightly nauseated in the semi-darkness. "Look, Princess…"

"If you are not my soulmate… I cannot bear it." she cut him off. "And if you are… If you _are _and you leave again…" She shook her head. "I am happy to stay ignorant. We did well enough not knowing all these years. Why would it matter now?"

"Doesn't." He shrugged, cupping her cheek. "But I ain't leaving you again, sweetheart. Stop staying that. I promise."

She covered his hand with hers, brushed her fingers on the battered gold bangle on his wrist…

"We are not people who can make promises." she reminded him. "We do not entirely belong to ourselves."

Such were the burden of public figures.

"I ain't leaving you." he stubbornly insisted.

Life made him a liar.

She wasn't even surprised, that was the thing. Not when the judges declared Katniss mentally unstable – that was what they had been aiming for – and not when her mother bailed in the night before the final day, when she was supposed to take responsibility for her daughter. She wasn't surprised either when Haymitch stepped forward and agreed to become her guardian. She wasn't surprised when the judge more or less banished them back to Twelve – she was the only one who _wasn't_, she mused, Plutarch and Haymitch both gaped as if they truly hadn't seen it coming; a charade on Plutarch's part, in her opinion.

"Come with me." he begged that last night, pressing a kiss right under the scar on her rib, not quite close enough to touch it but close enough to toy with the possibility of it.

She retraced the scar on his side with her fingertip later on and considered it, _really _considered it. Following him to Twelve, letting him kiss her scars, finally _knowing _for sure…

"Do you think I am your soulmate?" she asked in return.

"Don't care about that." he immediately countered.

"You seemed sure before." she pointed out. He closed his eyes and rested his head on her chest, coiling his arm around her waist. He didn't say what he was thinking so she said it for both of them. "Fate _does _seem to like keeping us apart. Perhaps it is trying to tell us something."

"_Fuck_ fate." he spat. "Come with me."

"I can't." she refused. "Peeta is still here. And… The Capitol is my home."

"No, it ain't." he scoffed. "Not anymore."

He kissed her hard and made love to her even harder, harder than he had let himself be with her since her imprisonment.

In the morning, he left with Katniss back to Twelve.

In the morning, she painted a smile on her face and went to visit Peeta at his fancy clinic to tell him the good news.

Without Haymitch, without a purpose, she drifted.

She struggled but kept her head above water while Peeta was still in the city.

Once he was shipped back off to Twelve, there was nothing forcing her to keep it together.

She _drifted_.

The nightmares, the hatred of people to whom she was either a traitor or a monster, the rebel government breathing down her neck, the press always avid to record the last living escort's grand fall from grace…

She drifted and drifted until there was no more money, no more friends and no more hope.

She drifted until she contemplated simply _accidentally _taking the wrong dose of painkillers to end it all. She stared at the handful of pills in her hand for the longest time. It took all she had to toss them and go beg Plutarch to lend her enough money for a train ticket fare.

It took all she had to knock on Haymitch's door one late winter afternoon, wearing her old pink coat that was too faded and too frayed for the weather.

Surprise flashed on his face when he opened the door but he didn't say anything. Not when he stepped aside to let her in and not when she started crying ugly sobs because he wasn't the only one who was too stubborn for their own good.

It was only once he had her sitting on his couch, wrapped in his arms while she finished crying her heart out, that he finally spoke. His voice sounded rough, chocked with emotions she couldn't name.

"Welcome home, sweetheart."

"I love you." she sobbed because, with everything, _she had never_ _told him_.

"Took you long enough to remember." he teased but he sounded relieved and grateful and… He dropped his forehead on her shoulder. "You're here to stay, yeah?"

"If you still want me." she replied. It would have been rude to assume after all.

He snorted in answer.

He snorted and held her tighter and pressed a kiss on her cheek and that was that.

Adjusting to living in Twelve wasn't easy. Adjusting to living_ together_ wasn't as hard as she had feared it would be although, truth be told, they had some experience with that from having shared the penthouse and her apartment. He was a slob and she was a control freak.

They clashed.

Often and hard.

Never hard enough to drive her away. Never hard enough for him to wish she had never come back.

People in the District didn't take kindly to her arrival but everything settled down after a while. She made friends, she learned to avoid her triggers, she forced herself to _live _again until one day she realized she didn't have to force herself anymore.

It took two years to get there.

There was something you never ever did in polite society and that was kissing someone's scars without their express permission. It would have been rude, after all, to accidentally impose yourself as a soulmate on an unsuspecting soul.

"Haymitch?" she hummed.

He hummed back, already half asleep on their nest of blankets. She admired the lights and shadows the roaring fire in the fireplace tossed over him, it was like a little light show all for herself. The coffee table had been pushed aside to make room for the blankets and cushions, their improvised picnic forgotten on the side with their clothes… The leftover of the bread they had just toasted and exchanged was in a basket next to the fireplace…

Haymitch was clearly spent but Effie was sitting up, a blanket wrapped around her to keep herself warm more than decent.

"May I kiss you?" she asked.

His lips stretched into a slow smirk but he didn't open his eyes. "We've been married ten minutes and _now_ you need to ask?"

"No." she answered, refusing to take the bait. "_May I kiss you?"_

She placed her hand on his side to make her point, right over the big scar that still looked very ugly even after all this time. Not as ugly as some of hers but ugly enough.

He did open his eyes, then. He studied her with rapt attention. "Why now?"

"Why not?" she deflected.

He lifted his eyebrows, his lips twitching with something that wasn't _quite _irritation. It was more akin to impatience because he knew she would end up explaining herself anyway. They hadn't talked about soulmates in years, hadn't let their mouth go anywhere near one of their respective scars – and it had been more frustrating for him that it had been for her.

She sighed and shrugged a small shrug that still made her bad shoulder ache at the impromptu move. "We are married. We love each other. You are not leaving me. It will not change anything if nothing happens."

"And if something happens?" he challenged.

"You tell me. You are the one likely to break down the door in your haste to run away from me." she mocked.

"Just married you." He snorted. "Ain't running away from you any time soon." He folded his arms under his head, the picture of relaxation. He wasn't fooling her though. "You're the one having a panic attack every time I try kissing your scars."

She pursed her lips. It must have been a new record for the first marital dispute to take place less than an hour after the actual toasting.

"May I kiss you now?" she repeated impatiently.

He was still watching her, his grey eyes just as intense as they used to be fifteen years earlier. "You don't want me to do it?"

She could have retorted that it would be easier that way since he was naked and exposed and she was wrapped in a blanket but it would have been a lie and she tried not to lie to him if she could help it.

"After." she answered. "Once we know if you are my soulmate."

Fondness and amusement battled on his face, like always when he thought she was being ridiculous. "You realize it's a two way street, yeah, sweetheart?"

"Not always." she countered. "Some people have unrequited soulmates."

He rolled his eyes. "Is that what you've been telling yourself all this time, then? That I didn't…"

"_Please_." she interrupted him. "Can we stop arguing and… do this? May I kiss you?"

He waved one of his hands in the air in an open invitation but when she bowed down toward his stomach, he grabbed her shoulder. He looked a little uncertain. "Can you do my knee instead? Ain't sure I'm ready to see this one go." She frowned and he winced. "I know it's weird, it's just… It's been here so long… I don't know."

He wasn't in any doubt his scars would disappear under her lips, she realized, he was just unsure about erasing that particular one. She redirected her kiss to his leg and the faded, almost gone, scar he had gotten when he was still a child.

When she took her lips away, the scar was gone.

She stared at it hard to make sure it wasn't a trick of the light.

When it remained gone, she sucked in a choked breath that was almost a sob.

"Can I do you now?" he asked, not in the least surprised or shocked. His lips quirked into a smirk as he sat up and wriggled his eyebrows.

She whacked his arm for that stupid innuendo but let him brush her hair over her shoulder. He was clearly aiming for the scar that curled over her shoulder from behind her back, the one he had tried to kiss away so long ago.

"Are you sure?" she whispered.

His gaze was sad. Or perhaps a little wistful. "I've _always_ been sure."

She frowned. "How?"

He sighed. "Cause there are scars you can't see, sweetheart, and you've always made those ones a little easier to bear."

Just like he had made it possible for her to learn how to live with her trauma when she had come to Twelve…

He had been erasing her scars for a long time, longer than she had known.

She breathed out and licked her lips. "Kiss me, Haymitch."

"Bossy." he complained but lowered his lips to her shoulder. He looked pleased when he drew back.

"No." She coiled her hand around his nape and she grinned the slow grin he liked because it was a prelude to more enjoyable activities. "_Kiss me_."

He kissed her deep and dirty, chuckling a little against his mouth. "Oh, I'm gonna kiss you _everywhere_, Princess… You just wait."

He wanted to erase the scars, to prove to her what she now knew deep down.

She knew that.

She also knew the scars and the kisses didn't matter in the end.

They had never mattered.

Perhaps they were soulmates and they had been intended for each other all along…

Perhaps…

But they had _chosen_ each other again and again and perhaps that was what really mattered...


End file.
